P&L Report Card In terms of banks seeking to make a move up the e-FX ladder the field has thinned out in recent years, mainly because so many have achieved their ambition to either rebuild or to establish themselves. The good news from this is that this report card can be very brief! Probably the […]

This is undoubtedly the most competitive section in these awards, even more so given the efforts made across the board to enhance the client execution experience over the past year or two. The best execution experience is about much more than the actual trade of course, it starts with decision making, goes through the flexibility […]

P&L Report Card The mood amongst the FX businesses on the street can be easily summed up by one comment from a senior manager that was repeated in various forms, several times over, during the demonstration process for these awards – “the bank sees the value in the FX franchise because it is less capital […]

P&L Report Card For a few years now, there has been a sense that regulatory reform – not least in the capital adequacy space, had destroyed the dream of the banks to build a world-class multi-asset, single-dealer platform. With trading being pushed towards regulated entities and banks reluctant to allocate more capital to underperforming businesses, […]

If there was one takeaway from the demonstration sessions that form part of the process in judging these awards, it was the air of optimism amongst the bankers showing their wares. Probably for the first time in a decade just about every institution seen had budget for the coming year and, apparently, a pipeline of […]

Greater automation in emerging markets is widely seen to be merely a matter of time. Profit & Loss talks to Darryl Hooker, former co-head of EBS Brokertec Market and currently consultant at Capitolis about his experience in helping bring a larger ‘e’ focus to Russia and China.
Profit & Loss: Can you give us an insight into the thinking that saw you focus on first Russian markets and then China when you were at EBS? What are the main signals that identify a frontier market ready to move into the mainstream of EM?
Darryl Hooker: A common pitfall in emerging markets is to make the mistake of considering them collectively despite the fact that they have very particular and specific nuances.

Galen Stops quizzes Jon Vollemaere, CEO of R5FX, about whether fintech solutions will be used in China, and emerging markets more broadly, to effectively replicate existing FX markets or create an entirely new ecosystem.
Galen Stops: How does the FX market in China compare to those in Europe and the US?
Jon Vollemaere: A lot of the Chinese dealing rooms look like the Western FX markets of the late ‘90s in the way that they're set up and the lack of technology in them.

How have crypto markets in Asia evolved in comparison to those in the US and Europe? And will these markets look more or less different in the future? Galen Stops takes a look.
T aking a glance at the biggest crypto exchanges by volume and a clear pattern emerges: according to data from coinmarketcap.com, a website that tracks crypto trading volumes, at least seven of the top 10 ranked exchanges are based in the APAC region.
By contrast, some of the more better known US-based exchanges are found much further down the list.

Galen Stops examines the extent to which banks in different emerging markets face the same challenges when trying to build out their e-FX businesses, and questions the extent to which technology developments in these markets will follow a familiar pattern.
Talking broadly about how firms in emerging markets operate is often misleading, given the diversity of these markets and how widely the demands and conditions vary within each one. And yet, when it comes to banks in emerging markets that are looking to build out their e-FX businesses, there are some common themes that can be identified. For starters, these banks actually tend to have a sizable and often fairly diverse customer base, although each of these clients tend to trade FX on a smaller scale in terms of transaction size compared to their counterparts in more developed countries.

The potential for Asian FX markets has long been talked about but has rarely been delivered, that may be changing, however, as Colin Lambert finds out.
When, in the early morning of October 7, 2016, the FX market witnessed a flash crash in Cable, there was a collective metaphorical shrugging of the shoulders, as epitomised by one London-based trader who told Profit & Loss, “It’s Asia – that type of thing happens.”
The perception is that institutions pay less attention to Asia, allocate fewer resources to the region generally and, as one global head of FX puts it, “Rely upon Asia not to drop the ball.”